Hello again from down under

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Hello again from down under! Henna Wilckens (intern) and I are deep into processing the sediment samples we collected last month from the bottom of Sydney Harbour. From our temporary work post at the University of New South Wales, we aim to sort through each of the millions of tiny sediment grains in our frozen samples to extract anything that once wriggled, crawled, filtered, or respired. The identity and number of creepy crawly critters in our samples will help us discern whether marine communities adjacent to man-made seawalls and pilings differ from those adjacent to natural rocky shorelines. All of this is part of a project I’m doing as an NSF EAPSI fellow with my Australian host, Dr. Emma Johnston, and post-doctoral researchers in her lab (link to earlier post).

Surprising as it may be, we’ve thus far encountered a number of striking and beautiful organisms within the urban muck.